


hold me tight and fear me not

by lagardère (laurore)



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Family Bonding, Holiday Season, Ugly Holiday Sweaters, Winter, an epilogue to the epilogue, post-The Queen of Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurore/pseuds/lagard%C3%A8re
Summary: “I think that’s why Oak wants to do this. For the gifts. I doubt there’s a more spiritual reason. And it’s not like the holiday means anything to Madoc and Oriana, either, or to any of us. Not even Heather, she says it’s a…” I try to recall the exact wording. “... A Coca-Cola-coloured tinsel nightmare.”
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 20
Kudos: 138
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	hold me tight and fear me not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [six1224](https://archiveofourown.org/users/six1224/gifts).



> I wasn't going to take part in Yuletide this year, and then this request appeared while I was spending a few hours at the airport reading The Queen of Nothing. It was fate.
> 
> six1224, I hope you’ll like it! Merry yuletide to you :)
> 
> Title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3yTEUnyYDA).

“Will there be pizza?” Cardan asks.

It’s about the last thing that I expected him to say, on the back of a gruelling meeting of the Living Council, which came after a night spent hearing out a group of sprites as they tried to explain to us how (and more fuzzily, _why_ ) they’d broken into a human house, stolen a bunch of cleaning products, and poisoned the Lake of Masks.

We have ordered the sprites to siphon the chemicals from the lake, a task that is certain to cause the premature death of a few of them, and to plague the rest with ill-health for the remainder of their extended lives. The Living Council, which once reproved Cardan for letting me pass sentences alone, and which later reproved him for passing a sentence without me, on the grounds that as a mortal queen, I must not appear weak of will, is now full of words of advice about why we shouldn’t be sentencing anyone together, either. 

_It is important_ , Randalin had stressed, ram horns swinging alarmingly back and forth with every insistent nod, _that they should see you as two separate rulers, so that the crown will not be weakened should anything happen to either of you._

Even by faerie standards, it was an exceptionally long night.

“Pizza,” I repeat numbly, rubbing my eyes, my hand coming away with golden glitter and black paint. This I am still unused to: being adorned before each public appearance like I’m about to head to the swankiest party in existence, except the party is a trial and people might die by the end of it. 

This being Faerieland, people would probably wind up dead by the end of a regular party as well.

“If I’m to go to the mortal world again, I’d like to enjoy its finer aspects,” Cardan says. As always, his smile catches me by surprise, as if he’d planted a hook somewhere behind my ribs and given it a sharp pull. It shouldn’t be allowed to look this good - and contrary to me, he hasn’t smudged paint all over his sharp cheekbones.

“Vivi would agree with you, about pizza being one of the finer things in life. But I doubt there’ll be pizza. Madoc’s house is in the middle of nowhere, I think we’ll be beyond the scope of Uber Eats, let alone an actual pizza place.”

“It doesn’t sound half as fun without that incentive,” Cardan notes dispiritedly, and for the first time since we met in the throne room the previous evening, I notice the shadows under his dark eyes and the dejected slant of his shoulders.

Maybe this night has taken its toll on the both of us, after all.

“There’ll be gifts,” I tell him. It’s what you’d say to a child, but it does dawn on me sometimes that though we’re now married and ruling an entire kingdom, and despite everything we’ve been through, the coups and the murders, the being-exiled and the being-cursed, the underwater prisons and the giant snakes, we are, after all, little more than children. “I think that’s why Oak wants to do this. For the gifts. I doubt there’s a more spiritual reason. And it’s not like the holiday means anything to Madoc and Oriana, either, or to any of us. Not even Heather, she says it’s a…” I try to recall the exact wording. “... A Coca-Cola-coloured tinsel nightmare.”

Cardan gives me the indulgent look he reserves for conversations he can’t properly follow. I’ve seen him use it on other people. It’s a clever way of making you think that he’s smarter than you and doesn’t need your explanations, but will give you time to get to your point because he’s feeling uncommonly lenient.

“Will you come with me, then?” I ask him. “With or without the pizza?”

Cardan has another of those easy, rueful smiles.

“Sure. Why not. I do like gifts.”

I can’t help but feel apprehensive as we abandon our ragwort steeds in the copse of trees and step back onto the alley leading to the house.

I have warned Madoc not to expect a pardon. This is meant to be a family celebration for Oak’s benefit, and not a pretext for politics and schemes, although if I know anything about yuletide traditions, it’s that you can’t escape the family drama. And still, I’d like to hope that for once, we’ll be able to get through a single night without anyone ending up poisoned, or stabbed, or muzzled, or tricked into a lifetime of servitude, to go merely by the tally Fala gave us, in rhyme, of the recent revels of the winter solstice.

The alley is overgrown, bare branches snapping against our calves as we walk, while tall oaks obscuring the sky, though lanterns have been hung high up in the trees to light our path, and as we get closer to the house, I realise the lanterns don’t contain tiny fluttering fairies, but regular light bulbs, and there’s a wire running from tree to tree and all the way to a trailing socket at the entrance of the house. The meaning of the gesture is obvious: _See how we have adapted to the mortal ways_ , the lanterns say. I know Madoc is trying to pacify me, to lure me into feeling awful about the exile that I myself pronounced against him. And yet I can’t help being moved.

The gesture itself feels false, as false as it would be if Madoc were to open the door of the house wearing one of those horrible Christmas jumpers with crackers spilling out of his pockets. But the reasoning behind it is very much my father’s, and it makes me realise with a brief stab of acute longing that after all, I did miss him.

To my relief, there’s no recorder on the porch to welcome us with scratchy carols. It’s only the light glowing a dark yellow through the frosted pane of the front door, a promise of warmth and companionship, of the slightly stultifying comfort of a good meal and a cosy armchair at the end of a long journey. I shiver against the cold, and Cardan’s arm settles across my shoulders.

“It’s alright if you’re not sure you want to be here,” he says. “It’s alright if you want and don’t want it at the same time.”

In the glow of the nearest lantern, his dark eyes have a strange shine to them, like perhaps he’s remembering things he'd rather forget. I’m reminded, as often, that leaving aside the distinction of faerie and mortal, his family memories are about as traumatising as mine.

“It’d be a lot worse if you weren’t here,” I tell him, surprising myself with this surge of honesty.

Judging from Cardan’s startled expression, he wasn’t expecting this from me as well. It makes me feel ashamed that I don’t let myself be softer more often - it makes me feel relieved that I haven’t mellowed completely. 

From where we stand and even after we’ve walked all the way from the trees, we can still hear the sound of the interstate, cars whooshing by in the aftermath of a heavy downpour. The house is situated right under an overpass. Depending on the angle you approach it from, and if you don’t pay too much attention to the bigger picture, it might look charming and remote. But like everything else in the mortal world, it’s been overrun by car exhaust and the discarded wrappers and cans that people fling out from their windows as they drive across the bridge. 

The rain pelted down on us as we flew, and though I don’t feel cold in my heavy, feather-trimmed cape, my elaborate hairdo has suffered from the journey. So has Cardan’s hair, though you wouldn’t believe it just from looking at it. It’s one of these things that I’m still unsure about, this trick where he runs a hand backwards through his damp curls and they assume whatever rakish sweep he wants them to: fairy magic or good genes? I’m not sure even Cardan knows.

“Whenever you’re ready,” he says, his biting tone oddly reassuring.

“I’ve duelled a redcap. I’ve faced you in giant snake form,” I mutter. “What’s a family reunion to that?”

Cardan knows me well enough to be aware that I’ll be forever at home in a battle, regardless of its scale, and never quite at ease among my own, but wisely maybe, he doesn’t say a word, and contents himself with a fleeting grin as he reaches towards the bronze knocker shaped like the head of a slightly cross-eyed boar.

“Jude, Cardan. Welcome, please come in.”

Oriana is wearing a long, pale dress that looks like a fine coating of snow. It glitters in the light from the hallway, and it almost comes as a reassurance to find out - stepping closer, feeling the waft of cold - that it is snow, that there is still magic at work in this house. While there’s some poetic justice to Madoc having to slum it in the mortal world, Oriana herself had been more of an accessory to his plans than a willing participant, and though she decided to follow him, I’m ready to admit that she didn’t really have much of a choice.

At least she’s retained some of the perks of her old life, I try to tell myself, as we follow her inside: the terms of Madoc’s exile were that he would live in the mortal world, and never touch a weapon again, but he was not forbidden from using magic, or from surrounding himself with it. The ground in the corridor is soft, dark earth, and while it might be winter outside, there are fruit trees in full bloom growing around the walls of the living room. Contrary to the electric lanterns we saw strung up along the alley, the lights inside have no visible source, and some of them flutter from one room to the next, taking care to stay well out of reach. The large wooden table in the dining room is covered in faerie food, mushrooms on toast sprinkled with herbs that would make me dance for days, and plum-like fruits that seem to rise and fall as if each of them contained a tiny beating heart, and small roasted birds dipped in honey and goat’s cheese that will lift the spirits of the folk and make a human heart burst. But alongside the faerie fare, there’s also peanut butter sandwiches and a large platter of what looks like genuine, non-poisonous seafood, and golden potato wedges and roasted chestnuts and butternut purée and a panettone that looks surprisingly like the one my father, my real father, Justin Duarte, would buy every Christmas from the tiny Italian store three blocks away from our house. The green and white wrapping is familiar, and the golden ribbon that my mother would remove from the colourful paper and put in Taryn’s hair. (Even then, I had wanted little to do with ribbons.)

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Vivi says dryly, as she comes over to kiss my cheek.

“I’ll make you a plate,” adds Heather, who’s wearing a crown of braided green glowsticks in her pink hair and a sweater with a large fir tree covered in tiny led lights that aren’t quite working anymore. It’s a relief to find her well, to find her happy, though not to the extent that she forgets to give the breathing plums a careful berth as she nears the table.

“The roast ham is a killer,” Vivi declares. “Cardan, have you ever had eggnog? Okay, don’t move.”

She sticks the mug in his hands and goes to rummage behind a claw-footed couch, the upholstery patterned with a myriad of eyes, some wide open, fringed with long lashes, others shut tight, their eyelids painted purple and green and gold.

“I brought the necessary supplies, if we’re to do this properly.”

This is how I end up greeting Madoc in a jumper adorned with evil-looking snowmen, while Cardan sips his eggnog nearby, somehow managing to pull off the whole “ice-skating penguins on a white and blue background” look, which I suspect must require at least a modicum of glamour.

“Daughter.” 

Madoc lifts his hand as if to set it on my shoulder before he checks himself, and the both of us shuffle awkwardly on the mossy carpet.

“I hope this evening is to your liking,” he says at last.

“The best of both worlds, isn’t it?”

Taryn has seemingly appeared out of nowhere, stealthily avoiding Vivi and her bag of ugly sweaters. Though she has chosen to wear one of her fine faerie gowns, she's picked the most festive, a dress of blue velvet covered in discs that clink and chime with her every movement. The dress has been loosened slightly around the hips to accommodate the roundness of her belly.

“Oh, eggnog,” she says airily, drifting towards the table to grab a mug. 

Most of the mugs are Vivi’s, a mismatched set of blue stripes and little pink elephants and a particularly large one that bears the name and address of a hairdressing salon. It doesn’t really surprise me to find out that Madoc and Oriana should lack the most elementary kitchenware.

Taryn was supposed to travel with us, though she’d failed to show up on time.

“You were right,” she says. “It would have been unwise to ride here, in the state I’m in. I got a carriage to drop me off.”

I suspect that this isn’t exactly what happened - her rosy cheeks and the wispy curls that have escaped her elaborate hairdo seem to indicate that she did indeed fly a ragwort poney over here, perhaps after she’d spent one too many hours wandering the rooms of the Court of Shadows in the Ghost’s company. But lying is after all our mortal privilege, and what reason would I have to expose her? It seems to me that the point of this kind of celebration is that everyone should be having fun, as long as it remains more or less harmless. I have spent enough time around the folk to know that there is no such thing as a harmless party or a harmless prank.

A pint-sized tornado erupts into the room as I accept a plate of food from Heather. Oak is dressed with a human’s understanding of what a faerie should look like, pointed green shoes and frock and a pointed hat that sits oddly atop his head, between his curved horns.

“Jude! You came!”

And with my little brother’s arrival, the dinner is momentarily put on hold while everyone submits to the compulsory exchange of gifts. Taryn is promptly buried in new gowns, though Oriana produces swaddling clothes for the baby in fine linen, embroidered with little figures happily engaged in a fox hunt, unaware that the forest is spying upon them, gnarled hands poking out from under the bushes and iridescent wings flickering against the bark of the trees, _It’s all very metaphorical_ , Vivi comments, passing on her own present of a mobile that Heather has strung with kelpies and phookas and a circle of three dancing pixies. 

For Heather there’s paintbrushes made with coarse hair that might have been pulled from the head of a troll, and tubes filled with impossible colours. From Oriana and Madoc there are also plants for Vivi and Heather’s flat, a plant that will grow better in the dark and another that will lift your spirits whenever you smell its purple flowers and another still that will wrap a tendril around your wrist as you’re about to leave to signify that you’ve forgotten something ( _Better you remember what it was_ , Oriana warns, _otherwise it just won’t let you go_ ). Cardan had a rug made for them out of the softest grass in the land. 

Of course it is Oak who gets the lion’s share of presents, pretty tunics of brocade and a more practical pair of jeans, toy boats that will sail themselves against a stream if you raise their sails properly, and soft doe-skinned boots and marbles filled with the faded light of stars that will bring you luck if you suck on them like candy, but might burn your tongue if you keep them in your mouth for too long.

I had a chest sent ahead of us containing my presents for Madoc and Oriana, scarves and gloves and cloaks trimmed with ermine and silver fox fur, and as I filled it I'd refused to linger on this impulse to wrap them up and shield them from the world I’d exiled them to. The scarves won’t do much against human pollution and the gloves won’t prevent their hands from blistering should they brush against iron. But they thank me all the same, it is a night for pretending, for the cultivation of a dangerous yet joyful spirit of reconciliation.

Vivi has brought Cardan a pair of Doc Martens in green velvet, and Taryn has found him an ornate mirror that will single out in song every aspect of your appearance that if finds to its liking, a gift that I will have to wrap up and bury inside a wardrobe the moment we get home if I don’t want to be driven mad in the weeks that follow. For me there is a human treaty on military strategy from Madoc, and a pearl-backed brush from Taryn that will undo any knot, be it in your hair or anywhere else ( _I don’t know if it also undoes complicated situations, but you should try it, it just might_ ).

With an ocean of shiny green and gold and red-coloured wrappings around us, and plates piled high between our hands, with soft music rising from a very human stereo hidden behind one of the trees in the living-room and Cardan warming my side on the couch, under a branch of mistletoe that keeps creeping back towards us no matter how often I try to bat it away - and his mouth tastes like honey, tastes like the sweet garnet-tinted wine we sipped as we made a hopeful toast to the new year - it should be impossible to bear a grudge against anyone, to believe we were ever anything but a loving family.

And for a moment, I really do put my paranoia to rest. That’s the point of this holiday, after all: for a few hours we will revel in the warmth, indulge that momentary bliss, the better to be hungover in the morning, dazzled by the sun as it sets alight the discarded remnants of the night and every flawed facet of the things that we tried to set aside and forget.

“I’m glad we came,” I whisper to Cardan, and find that I mean it.

His lips brush against my cheek, a conciliatory kiss before he slaps aside the mistletoe.

“Me too. And you haven’t even seen your present yet,” he adds, dark eyebrows arched suggestively.

I laugh in spite of myself.

Maybe the rest is a lie, maybe the rest won’t last. But this, at least, I know I’ll get to keep, and really, it’s worth all the talking mirrors and grass rugs and obnoxious plants in this insanely magical world.


End file.
